Anahit Ghazakhetsyan
- Armenia -
Anahit Ghazakhetsyan is an Armenian writer and translator born in 1999. At the age of 16, she received the prestigious "Revelation of the Year" award from Granish, a prominent and the largest Armenian literary community. The following year, Anahit was granted funding by the Ministry of Culture to publish her debut poetry collection, "Dilemma."
Anahit's talent for translation shines through as she has successfully translated over six novels, along with numerous prose and poetry works, from English and Russian. Her dedication to bridging cultures through literature has made her a vital contributor to the literary landscape. Her own poetry has also garnered international recognition, with translations available in Italian, Ukrainian, Persian, English, and more.
In addition to her literary pursuits, Anahit pursued studies in International Relations and Diplomacy in both Armenia and Austria. This academic background has added depth and a global perspective to her writing. Currently, Anahit holds the position of International Program Manager at the esteemed Yerevan Book Fest. Currently, she lives and studies in Copenhagen, Denmark.
She is now working on her second poetry collection, which will be bilingual (Armenian-English).
How outdated the concepts of "youth poetry" and "young poet" are, yet how omnipresent they remain in the courts of people who fervently scale literature in every deed. And at a time when the poetry line and the poem as a whole are difficult to approach poetically. It goes without saying that accomplishing this requires first comprehending, then getting over, the basic forms and requirements of the literature of the period, as well as identifying that literature. The poetry in Anahit Ghazakhetsyan's book "Dilemma" suggests a particularly poetic approach (“Dilemma,” Yerevan, “Magagalat,” 2018, 86 pages). Anahit sets her poetic world into motion by defining the space of that world, the “sea.”
The guides testifying to “The Sea,” in which there are not a few clear textual references, are silent conversations with the creators of the past and present, their narrators, their melodiousness, as well as pauses that gently coordinate the structure of the poetic world in the middle of the poetic series; they are open to multi-branch interpretations. Not giving in to unnecessary word games and the trickiness of thinking, refraining from the temptations of turning the poem into philosophy, psychoanalysis, imagery, and intellectual staging, Anahit chooses the brave path of a simple line and a meaningful statement.
In “Dilemma,” there is always someone to whom the poet speaks without demanding anything in return. Here, in the poems “étude," "anti-prayer," "puzzle," "beginning with the letter e," the issue is not only about love, history, death, salvation, but also about finding opportunities to experience them and certainly conveying them to the one who creates them, to whom only poetry can create.
Heeding the experience of feeling, Anahit carefully rearranges the results in her poems, rejecting any effort to transform the experience of feeling into the experience of life.
"Dilemma" is a book about the experience of feelings. Anahit returns each questionable life, love to love, love to place, past and future, peacefully, saying goodbye to the conventions of return.
Essay by Aram Pachyan
Poetry
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what have I done for love? / Ի՞նչ եմ արել սիրո համար
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July 14, 2023 /
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He, who had no name / Նա, ով չունեցավ անուն
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Birthday Spell / Ծննդյան հմայախոսք
